January 10, 2008, 10:48 PM CT

Does the face of a CEO determine a successful company?

It certainly takes more than a pretty face to run a leading national corporation. But as per a recent Tufts University study, the performance levels of America's top companies could be correlation to the first impressions made by their chief executive officers (CEOs).

Using photographs of the highest and lowest ranked Fortune 1000 companies' CEOs, psychology experts Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady quizzed ordinary college students to determine which of the pictured faces were characteristic of a leader.

Without knowledge of the pictured individuals' job titles, and by rating the faces on competence, dominance, likeability, facial maturity and trustworthiness, the students were able to distinguish between the successful and the not-so-successful CEOs.

Despite the ambiguity of the images, which were cropped to the face, put into grayscale and standardized in size, ratings of power- and leadership-related traits from CEOs' faces were significantly correlation to company profits.

"These findings suggest that naive judgments may provide more accurate assessments of individuals than well-informed judgments can," wrote the authors. "Our results are especially striking given the uniformity of the CEOs' appearances." The majority of CEOs, who were selected as per their Fortune 1000 ranking, were Caucasian males of similar age......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

January 8, 2008, 8:47 PM CT

Connection Between Job Loss And Poor Health

Employees who lose their jobs because of their health suffer more significant depression and detrimental health outcomes than people who lose their jobs for non-health reasons, new research shows.

The study also suggests that people who are reemployed quickly have better health outcomes than those who remain unemployed.

It's not clear how a number of people involuntarily lose their jobs for health-related reasons, but shaping policy to meet the needs of this population of the unemployed is critical, a University of Michigan professor says.

"We need to know more about this population for intervention and policy reasons," said Sarah Burgard, assistant professor of sociology with appointments in the Institute for Social Research and the School of Public Health. "Re-employment appears to be key for mitigating these health effects for people who lose their jobs-either for health-related reasons or other reasons, say a layoff."

Much existing research suggests a link between involuntary job loss and health consequences, but those analyses don't account for an employee's pre-existing health or other outside factors, such as socioeconomic background, that may actually make the link spurious.

People who have lost their jobs and want to get back to work may need the assistance of interim health insurance coverage, unemployment benefits, and re-employment programs. This may be especially true for people who have health problems that caused them to lose their jobs. However, these traditional employment benefits were designed to meet the needs of workers in standard full-time jobs,......... Posted by: Mac      Read more         Source

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:03:46 GMT

Children to Run Business?

Will your kids be running the company in the future?

The Small Business Trends website has six tips for getting children involved with the business. One of the positive things about the list is that they say that you should be supporting your children no matter what they decide. Give them everything they need to be a success whether if it is your business or something they want to do.

One thing they suggest is that you don't plan your children in the business. If you plan is for them to succeed you and they decide to do something else are you going to be angry with them and what will you do instead?

You also want to look at education and insure your children get the best education that is possible. Don't influence them on what they study since that will cause long term resentment. I would also suggest that you encourage them to work during school not only to earn money for school but it will also allow them to "work for a living" and get a better idea on what life is like on the outside.

Another suggestion is to talk about what you do and tell stories. This not only gives them an idea of what you do it will give them perspective on how the money is made and what you had to do to build the business.

One thing that I would add to it, is make them work their way from the bottom. One of the things I have seen too often is that the children of the founders usually end up coming out of school and into an important position. It does not give them a perspective on how things are in the trenches and creates resentment among the employees.

Just a few things to think about when planning succession. Posted by: John Dornoff      Read more     Source

January 3, 2008, 9:44 PM CT

US presidential candidates and their views on scientific issues

What are the United States presidential candidates positions on scientific topics ranging from evolution to global warming? A special news report, which is being reported in the 4 recent issue of the journal Science, addresses these questions and profiles the nine leading candidates on where they stand on important scientific issues.

The 10-page special report, Science and the Next U.S. President profiles Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson and offers voters a glimpse at each candidates views on science.

"Science felt that it was important to find out what the presidential candidates think about issues that may not be part of their standard stump speeches but that are vital to the future of the country--from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to improving science and math education, said Jeffrey Mervis, deputy news editor, who oversees election coverage for the magazine's news department. We hope that the coverage may also kick off a broader discussion of the role of science and technology in decisions being made in Washington and around the world.

Mervis writes in the articles introduction that the issues seem likely to remain relevant no matter who becomes the 44th president of the United States. Here are some of the reports from Sciences news writers:........ Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

December 28, 2007, 8:02 AM CT

Improve Accuracy And Speed For Voters Of All Ages

Human factors scientists at Florida State University have identified ways to improve electronic voting accuracy among older voters while also shortening waiting time at the polls. The results of their study were reported in the fall 2007 issue of Ergonomics in Design.

During the 2000 presidential election in Palm Beach County, Florida, voting machines and ballot formats came under national scrutiny after it was observed that more than 29,000 ballots were spoiled. The use of punchcard machines and a confusing ballot layout caused some voters to select an unintended candidate or double-punch the ballot. In 2004 in Ohio, the issue of time at the polls became a critical factor; despite the use of electronic voting machines, a confusing ballot layout and an insufficient number of machines caused long waiting lines and prevented some Ohioans from voting.

These problems led Tiffany Jastrzembski and Neil Charness to test ballot and machine usability with a particular focus on older voters, who - because of reduced vision and motor control - tend to have more problems using computers, particularly under time pressure. These scientists adopted a gerontological approach, which implies that when systems are made easier for older people to use, performance among younger users also improves......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

December 28, 2007, 7:58 AM CT

Pilot error declines as factor in airline mishaps

The number of airline mishaps attributed to pilot error significantly declined between 1983 and 2002, as per an analysis conducted by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. While the overall rate of airline mishaps remained stable during that time, the proportion of mishaps involving pilot error decreased 40 percent. The rate of mishaps correlation to a pilots poor decision-making declined 71 percent. The scientists attribute the decline to better training and improvements in technology that aid pilot decision-making. The findings appear in the January 2007 edition of Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine.

A 40 percent decline in pilot error-related mishaps is very impressive. Pilot error has long been considered the most prominent contributor to aviation crashes, said the studys lead author, Susan P. Baker, MPH, a professor with the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy and the Bloomberg Schools Department of Health Policy and Management.

The study examined 558 airline mishaps between 1983 and 2002. Baker and her colleagues also looked at the circumstances of pilot error, which they characterized as carelessness on the part of the pilot and crew, flawed decision-making, mishandling of the aircraft or poor crew interaction......... Posted by: Jim      Read more         Source

December 18, 2007, 9:18 PM CT

Polls overestimate support for Obama

A new national study of voters who say they might vote in Democratic primaries and caucuses shows a striking disconnect between their explicit and implicit preferences, as per University of Washington researchers.

When asked who they would vote for, Sen. Barack Obama held a 42 percent to 34 percent margin over Sen. Hilary Clinton. Former senator John Edwards was in third place with 12 percent. However, when the same people took an Implicit Association Test that measures their unconscious or automatic preferences, Clinton was the runaway winner, the favored candidate of 48 percent of the voters. Edwards was second with 27 percent and Obama had 25 percent.

Bethany Albertson, a UW assistant political science professor and Anthony Greenwald, a UW psychology professor and inventor of the Implicit Association Test, emphasized that their participants were not a representative sample of Democrats but were self-selected volunteers who took an experimental test over the Web. The data came from 926 people age 18 and over who took the test between Oct. 16 and Nov. 5. Of that total, 687 people said they might vote in the Democratic primaries.

In the past, poll numbers have often overestimated support for black candidates when in comparison to their actual vote percentages, said Albertson. Findings of this study suggest that this familiar pattern may be about to repeat itself in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

December 13, 2007, 9:49 PM CT

Stress, depression high among Canadian peacekeepers

Canada's peacekeepers suffer similar rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) as combat, war-zone soldiers, as per a London, Ont. research team.

Psychiatry expert J. Donald Richardson and his co-researchers also observed that PTSD rates and severity were linked to younger age, single marital status and deployment frequency.

Richardson is a consultant psychiatry expert with the Operational Stress Injury Clinic at Parkwood Hospital, part of St. Joseph's Health Care, London and a professor with the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario.

His team conducted a random, national survey of more than 1,000 Canadian peacekeeping veterans with service-related disabilities. The participants were below the age of 65 and had served with the Canadian Forces from 1990 to 1999.

The research, reported in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, found a third of veterans deployed more than once suffered probable clinical depression, and 30 per cent of those deployed one time were affected.

The rates of probable PTSD were 11 per cent for those deployed once and 15 per cent for those deployed more than once. The authors also found peacekeepers were more likely to have PTSD and more severe symptoms if they were young, single, or had multiple deployments......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

December 11, 2007, 10:34 PM CT

Does time slow in crisis?

In The Matrix, hero Neo wins his battles when time slows in the simulated world. In the real world, accident victims often report a similar slowing as they slide unavoidably into disaster. But can humans really experience events in slow motion?

Apparently not, said scientists at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who studied how volunteers experience time when they free-fall 100 feet into a net below. Even though participants remembered their own falls as having taken one-third longer than those of the other study participants, they were not able to see more events in time. Instead, the longer duration was a trick of their memory, not an actual slow-motion experience. The study appears online today in the journal Public Library of Science One.

People usually report that time seemed to move in slow motion during a car accident, said Dr. David Eagleman, assistant professor of neuroscience and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at BCM. Does the experience of slow motion really happen, or does it only seem to have happened in retrospect? The answer is critical for understanding how time is represented in the brain.

When roller coasters and other scary amusement park rides did not cause enough fear to make time slow down, Eagleman and his graduate students Chess Stetson and Matthew Fiesta sought out something even more frightening. They hit upon Suspended Catch Air Device diving, a controlled free-fall system in which divers are dropped backwards off a platform 150 feet up and land safely in a net. Divers are not attached to ropes and reach 70 miles per hour during the three-second fall......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

December 11, 2007, 10:20 PM CT

U.S. middle school math teachers are ill-prepared

Middle school math teachers in the United States are not as well prepared to teach this subject in comparison to teachers in five other countries, something that could negatively affect the U.S. as it continues to compete on an international scale.

The findings of this new Michigan State University study, Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century (MT21), were presented today at a press conference at the National Press Club.

"Our future teachers are getting weak training mathematically and are just not prepared to teach the demanding mathematics curriculum we need for middle schools if we hope to compete internationally," said William Schmidt, MSU Distinguished Professor of counseling, educational psychology and special education, who directed the study.

MT21 studied how well a sample of universities and teacher-training institutions prepare middle school math teachers in the U.S., South Korea, Taiwan, Gera number of, Bulgaria and Mexico. Specifically, 2,627 future teachers were surveyed about their preparation, knowledge and beliefs in this area.

"It is important for us as a nation to understand that teacher preparation programs are critical, not only for future teachers, but also for the children they will be teaching," Schmidt said.

The length of teacher preparation requirements varied from four to seven years among the countries, as per the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation......... Posted by: Jaison      Read more         Source